A slightly surprising one, this one and only release from West Midlands (UK) Trappazat - a band that didn't even existed for that long under this particular guise, if we're going to stick to the facts here. In fact, the whole endeavour became associated with Paul Britton (of Scarab underground fame) as something of his creation, but it eventually turned out that it wasn't the case: the band already existed for a while, and Britton just took vocal duties to himself when original singer Kerry Taylor was sacked. The other band members - guitarists Brian Meacham (ex-Hostile/Demonaxe) and Andrew Deams, plus bass player Max McKee and sticksman Shane Spencer - allowed Britton to have a great creative input in their then-formative repertoire (and also exhumed Scarab's "Prisoners"), and considering that the man have been a pretty accomplished songwriter from the very start, it should come as no surprise to learn that this "From Dusk Till Dawn" (nicely edited by the ever-dependable High Roller in the now somewhat distant year of 2012) is a very tight and accomplished album.
The songs here featured were recorded in 1990, little less than a year after the group recruited Paul Britton and started playing the club circuit under the Trappazat guise. Curiously, the material wasn't released in its original form for over 20 years - as Britton left before a deal was signed, the band renamed themselves as Warning (a vastly-overused choice, I would say), brought back Kerry Taylor and released a re-recorded version of the whole thing, a very obscure and poorly-distributed cassette-only album named "Take No Prisoners" that finally came out in 1992. Warning didn't last the distance, as we all know, but Paul Britton remained a well-regarded name in the British Metal underground, and the good response to the Scarab reissues and compilations seems to have been more than enough to motivate High Roller Records to exhume the original sessions and release it in CD format, again under the name Trappazat (not the best-sounding monicker ever, but a more individualistic choice, no doubt about that).
Slightly confusing timelines aside, "From Dusk Till Dawn" is a great collection of nice, dynamic Heavy Metal with intense guitar interplay and tons of energy. In fact, songs like "1 AM D.O.A." and "Breakout" bring some interesting thrash metal nuances to the band's sound - nowhere close to what local acts like Reanimator and Xentrix were doing at roughly the same time, mind you, but more of a sharpness to the guitar interplay that adds a much welcome punch to the proceedings. A lot of songs are actually pretty lenghty, so we're not dealing with a group trying to write hit singles for the masses, but rather some dead-serious metal musicians doing their best to craft some dynamic, highly melodic songs to be proud of. Some may argue that Trappazat were trying to associate themselves with the embryonic power metal scene of the late 80's (a scene that never fully developed in the UK, at least not in its original form), and I wouldn't fully disagree with that notion ("Soldiers", for instance, could be included on Cloven Hoof's "A Sultans Ranson" without raising too many eyebrows), but still I think the lads were just trying to keep the long and proud tradition of British Heavy Metal going, adding some contemporary elements without veering too far from the sound of local favorites like Tokyo Blade (most of all), Blitzkrieg, Angel Witch and so on. Not the most innovative music you'll ever hear, that's for sure - but those of you who like Heavy Metal as it was done in the 1980s are sure to have great fun while listening to "From Dusk Till Dawn", as nearly all tracks offer some great excuses for a good and healthy headbang.
The turn of the 90s was a very difficult time for more traditional brands of Heavy Metal, as we all know - more aggressive brands of music were taking the metalheads into their hands, while the market as a whole couldn't care less to what they perceived as an 'old' and 'unfashionable' form of heavy music. Therefore, it's not a huge surprise that Trappazat / Warning failed to succeed - which is not to say that it was fair, mind you, but that's life. The band fell apart not long after their sole cassette effort was out (the liner notes to the CD can surely offer a more detailed account of the group's fortunes, if you kind reader is interested), but some of the musicians kept a fair level of involvement with the scene - most of all bassist Max McKee, that played with a number of small-time local nonentities before plugging in with The Handsome Beasts in 2015, an endeavour that seems to be dormant these days, but to which the bass player is still pretty much attached to. Both Brian Meacham and Shane Spencer took part on Paul Britton's project The Battle of Britton, with a sound closer to doom metal and that released a pretty promising CD in 2018, though nothing more materialized from their camp ever since.
As for this sole memento from Trappazat, we're not dealing with an undiscovered classic of any sort, but it's still a nice enough piece in UK's heavy rock puzzle that could (and should) have been taken more seriously back in the early 1990s - not that they were the only ones to be cruelly overlooked back then, but I'm sure you know what I mean. Given the fact that used copies can still be located without too much effort and at pretty reasonable prices, I guess that giving this CD a home in your record collection is sort of doing poetic justice, in a way - and all while getting some good music out of it, which is always a thing to appreciate. I'm still to listen to Warning's version of this record, but this blank will be filled in due course (already located some quite decent mp3 files of it), so there's a good chance I'll be dropping a few lines about it in the near future.
Paul Britton (V), Brian Meacham (G), Andrew Deans (G), Max McKee (B), Shane Spencer (D).
01. From Dusk Till Dawn 5:09
02. 1 AM D.O.A. 6:38
03. Can't Stand the Heat 6:24
04. Breakout 7:57
05. Soldiers 6:53
06. Possessed 3:41
07. First Born 5:10
08. Prisoners 7:00
Have you been involved with any of the bands mentioned here? Have any extra info and/or corrections? Please e-mail me at drequon@gmail.com and let me know!
